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Restrictions on Use and Reproduction

Property rights to the physical object belong to the UC Regents. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the
creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright
owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Jean Pascal Sébah was trained in photography as a young boy of sixteen by his brother Cosimi, following the death of their
Syrian-born father, Pascal Sébah in 1886. Jean took over the studio in 1888, and entered into partnership with a Frenchman,
Polycarpe Joaillier; the studio became known as Sébah & Joaillier. Based in Constantinople, they were the official photographers
of the Sultan. According to the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, edited by John Hannavy, Sébah and Joaillier
came to be the chief "suppliers of evocative imagery to the increasing number of people who undertook the Victorian Grand
Tour" (see v. I, p. 1730-1734). Sébah & Joaillier continued in business until 1910 when Joaillier returned to France.

Scope and Content

In addition to the popular interior and exterior views of Saint Sophia mosque, the Sultan's mosque, and the Hippodrome, there
are photographs of the Galata Tower, the ferry docks in the Eminönü district on the south side of the Golden Horn, and street
scenes in the Scutari district on the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus. Street scenes include merchants peering from their
storefronts, a group of Turkish men in their native dress drinking small cups of coffee and smoking water pipes or hookahs,
and an old date merchant, a huge wicker basked strapped to his back, holding a scale used to weigh out his dates. Two of the
photographs feature a local cemetery and tall ornately engraved tombstones.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.